Foes Of Bureaucracy Learn A Tough Lesson

Defunct Icc Lives On Under Another Name

June 16, 1996|By Mary Jacoby, Washington Bureau.

WASHINGTON — Outside a fortress-like federal building across from the Washington Monument stands what should be the perfect epitaph for government downsizing: A sign with its words scraped off, blank because the agency inside is newly abolished.

Yet just as the faint outlines of "Interstate Commerce Commission" are still visible on the sign, so the venerable agency itself-- resilient as an old weed-- has not really gone away.

Every day, three commissioners of the former ICC show up for work, along with a reduced force of almost 200 bureaucrats from the terminated agency. They sit at their same desks and mediate the same railroad rate-charge disputes and mergers, just as before.

Only now, most of them work for a new government outpost, the Surface Transportation Board.

In a vivid example of the long roots of Washington bureaucracy, the law that terminated the ICC on Jan. 1 simultaneously gave birth to an entity that took over many, though not all, of the commission's duties.

At $15 million, the new board's budget is half the ICC's. Its workforce was slashed to 126 from 400, a number that already was much reduced from the 2,000 people who worked there before 1980.

But another 61 ICC employees were simply transferred to the Federal Highway Administration payroll, though they are still at their same desks, processing their same truck insurance and licensing forms, just as before.

True, many of the commission's duties have been eliminated. But for the hard-core, laissez-faire Republicans who took over Congress last year, the continued existence of what amounts to the old ICC is a symbol of failure.

"We managed to get rid of the sign outside the building saying Interstate Commerce Commission, but essentially the beast still lives," said Glenn LeMunyon, a former staffer for Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, a member of the House GOP leadership who led the fight to abolish the agency.

The principle behind reducing government regulation is to unshackle industry and allow free markets to work their magic of efficiency, LeMunyon said. So now, "What the hell is this board? People try to justify this to me until they are blue in the face. I just say no."

Republicans and President Clinton had targeted the 108-year-old ICC for elimination last year, arguing it was an anachronism that hindered free markets. Its reincarnation is a tribute to Washington's widely famed special interests.

In this case, railroads lobbied hard to keep an industry-friendly forum for their mergers. Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, members of the transportation committees, whose clout stood to be greatly diminished by elimination of the ICC, also supported the new board.

"Congress collectively decided" to create the board, said Democrat Linda Morgan, the last chairman of the ICC and the first chairman of the Surface Transportation Board. "We're about taking what's left and making it work well."

But those who worked to kill the ICC scoff.

"It's simple. You have the same three commissioners and the same staff, sitting in the same building, doing basically the same job," said former Interstate Commerce Commissioner Ed Emmett, who now runs a trade association for freight shippers in Washington.

Not to say the ICC Termination Act had no impact. Gone is the musty Tariff Examination Room on the fourth floor, where boxloads of papers from the nation's trucking companies were stacked to the ceiling, detailing shipping charges for everything from toys to wool.

But while the ICC workers dutifully scrutinized the filings, no one outside government paid much attention. Deregulation in the 1980s had stripped the ICC of power to set the rates. The tariff filings were an anachronism, but one that--until Jan. 1--kept a small army of bureaucrats busily employed.

Board chairman Morgan said until Congress wipes the laws off the books, the board will be needed to carry out existing regulatory functions, mostly concerning railroads.

Those functions include review of railroad mergers, rate disputes, new rail line construction and abandonment of old lines. But the onerous tariff filing requirements for trucking and railroad companies have been eliminated, she said.

"Hopefully, we'll be a success story about the reinventing that will occur after downsizing," said Morgan, who earns more than $115,000 a year.

But this "reinventing" has freight shipping companies up in arms. In an apparent move to protect itself from future elimination attempts, the board has proposed charging industry to regulate it.

The most dramatic example is a proposed fee increase for utility companies that ask the board to rule on whether railroads are charging too much to ship coal: $233,000, up from $1,000.

"This is absurd!" the North Dakota Grain Dealers Association protested in a May 8 letter to the board. Other rate increases would be equally harmful, the association wrote.